Tag: Islam

Maulana Bhashani remains a much demonised figure amongst a certain section of North East India for leading the movement for immigration of Bengali land hungry peasant into colonial Assam. So who was Maulana Bhashani? A rustic pir? A vulgar peasant leader? Scourge of Colonial India and Post colonial Pakistan & Bangladesh state? Communist? Islamist? Today, socialism and Islam are often viewed as incompatible. Does the career of Maulana Bhashani, “the Red Maulana” of Bangladesh, offer a corrective to this view?

Most books in English on the subject matter are about Muslims and address non-Muslim readers—painstakingly defending or decrying Islam. Till Talaq Do Us Part by Zia Us Salam is refreshing in also addressing Muslim readers. It is positioned as a primer on the issue of Talaq busting myths of all kinds and making a strong case for potential for gender justice from within Islam.

Hadiya is being treated not as a LEGAL SUBJECT by India. Therefore, her case must be transferred to the International Criminal Court… Indian State has deprived Dr. Hadiya of four fundamental HUMAN rights (Not just rights). And, not even our greatest champions of human rights are protesting it.

Ali Shariati was throughout his life a deeply committed Muslim but his Shi‘ism was of a radical, revolutionary type, thoroughly anti-clerical in its opposition to what he called ‘Safavid Shi‘ism’ (as opposed to his own ‘Red Shi‘ism’), the kind of Islam that disarmed the masses through its passive complicity with the ruling classes. Given that in modern Iran the clergy depended on the financial support of the richer merchants (bazaaris), Shariati’s ‘visceral contempt for the bourgeoisie’ extended to the ulama as well. His lectures and writings enraged the clerics, especially the influential group that saw in Khomeini the true face of the ‘revolutionary’ movement against Muhammad Reza Shah, and led to repeated fatwas condemning him after the revolution.

On January 21, 2017, early morning an everyday Kashmiri feminist died quietly in her sleep [this “her” is a typo, but I prefer to leave it here; for if anything he always felt it was an honor to be a woman] after few bedridden years, which he absolutely hated. This was also the first ever, I had seen my maternal grandfather Gulam Ahmed Lone, who I call Daddy like everyone else in the family, cower before life a little. Even asking the universe to let him go rather than for wellness. He thought he had lived it all, and ended if not the best but still a little better.

We, ordinary citizens, artists, intellectuals, writers, poets from the Muslim community, want to emphasis that the Muslim community in India is diverse, plural and heterogeneous. No single organization or group of people/organisations can claim to speak on behalf of the whole community. Muslims and people of Muslim descent living in India follow different customs and celebrate a large number of festivals some common to all and some different from each other depending on the local cultural practices of the region where they reside. They speak different languages and engage at multiple levels of the thought process.

Any careful analysis of Salafism must take into consideration the diversity within the movement before lumping all self-identified or suspected Salafis or Salafi personalities together and expressing a blanket demonization of a monolithic Salafism

The decision of the World Sufi Forum to invite Narendra Modi is going to be a new episode in the political plan of the BJP government. By doing so, the right-wing government continues the otherisation and exclusion of Muslims by supporting one Islam over another Islam – if only one interpretation of Islam (i.e. peace-loving Sufi Islam) is palatable to Modi, then what happens to Muslims who might be critical of the systems of power, oppression and exploitation that Modi’s government perpetuates? Are these “bad” and “political” Muslims no longer able to be peace-loving, Sufi or considered acceptable by the Indian state?

In most societies the acts of religious conversion do ruffle the feathers of those who take the task of policing group boundaries zealously. In India too the issue of proselytization has been a matter of immense anxiety for the majoritarian groups belonging to Hindu religion

In these days of endless hatred and violence based on religion, it is a frequent refrain that the secular character of our society is under threat. However ‘secularism’ has become a word that has been so abused that it is now seen with cynicism, if not utter disgust.